Could Audrey II Talk The Ingalls-Wilders Into Destroying Themselves?

I was showing Little Shop Of Horrors to my sweetie Fox yesterday when I accidentally called it “Little House of Horrors.” Which, naturally, led me to imagine the crossover between Audrey II, sweet-talking, human-eating plant mastermind of Little Shop of Horrors, and the Ingalls-Wilder family of Little House of the Prairie.

Who’d win?

A friend of mine ventured the Wilders would win because “They’re tough.” But this has never been a battle of muscle – this is about persuasion. If the Wilders found some strange and interesting plant on their doorstep, placed as part of an alien invasion, would they succumb to Audrey II’s dulcet tones?

(Not that the plant would be named “Audrey II” in this timeline, of course. But we could debate for hours about what the Ingalls-Wilder family would call their pet plant, if they named it at all.)

Now, I do think they would care for the plant, as they’re usually on the verge of starvation and good farmers – so they’d have every urge to see what a weirdo plant might grow into, especially if it promised to be a unique crop. (Which, given that Audrey II’s end game is to spread its seeds across America, it would be and how.)

The sticking point is feeding it blood.

I don’t doubt that a compassionate Laura might give Audrey a few drops of blood to keep a cute plant from starving – but ramping up to local dentists seems out of line for the very moral family. However, there’s two issues that make me think the Wilders could be talked into feeding Audrey, who is after all very persuasive:

First off, the question of whether Audrey II could live off of inhuman blood is a question that’s never quite answered. All it eats in the show is humans, but the rules as given in “Feed Me” are:

Must be bloodMust be fresh

When Seymour pleads “Does it have to be human?”, note that Audrey II does not answer.

So it’s entirely possible that Audrey II could turn into some watchdog for the corn storage, if Audrey II could eat rats. And eventually, given the family mostly sees animals as livestock, they might toss a deer into Audrey if Audrey was bringing in a handsome income. Not hard for Audrey to grow up big and strong then. And Lordy, if Audrey can convince them to lay a perimeter of Audrey IIs around their house to protect their crops and hens, well, victory is easily at tendril.

But what if it must be human blood? People say “No, the Ingalls-Wilders are not murderers!” And yet…

They do have a barely-concealed concept for the Native American population. Who they both fear and envy – which makes sense, considering the Ingalls-Wilders lived on stolen Native American land.

I mean, nobody wants to talk about the family’s darker urges, but playing on darker urges is literally all Audrey does – he quietly leads people to believe that maaaaybe a sacrifice of someone who’s not really fully human could be worth the payoff. I mean, you don’t want to think that Ma, bigoted ol’ Ma, might shove some strange intruder into the maw of a champing plant, but can you really rule it out?

So my take is that it’s not a sure thing by any means, but there’s at least a chance that Audrey II could lead the Ingalls-Wilders down the primrose path to sporulation. At which point we then enter a very interesting alternate American history, somewhat like Sarah Gailey’s hippo-infested Mississippi, wherein the plains are now covered with blood-thirsting Audreys – small ones, ones unable to survive on their own without talking people into hideous acts, but enough to bite off a toe. And entire towns in thrall to their sacrificial Audrey-God, and Ma and Pa and Laura desperately trying to warn the world.

1 Comment

Rosemarie

Dec 3, 2017

I’m so sorry to be that person (oh god), but they were NOT the Ingalls-Wilder family. Laura Ingalls Wilder was her married name. Her family was the Ingalls family. The “Wilder” came from Laura’s husband, Almanzo Wilder.

I absolutely believe Ma would shove an intruder into the jaws of their pet murderplant, though.